pdf is stored but .zotero-ft-cache and .zotero-ft-info are not created

fpantin

Hi everyone,

When I add a new article in Zotero using the icon in the adress bar of Firefox, the new item is created correctly, the pdf file is attached and stored in a new folder. However, sometimes the files .zotero-ft-cache and .zotero-ft-info are not created in this new folder so that the pdf cannot be open in Firefox by double-clicking on the Zotero open. The pdf is correctly read when I open it with an external viewer.

It occurs only sometimes and I cannot find the criteria that makes it happens. No error message is displayed. I am using FF 9.0.1 and 2.1.10. The problem occurs both on Windows XP and Vista.

Thanks for help,

Florent

dstillman

sometimes the files .zotero-ft-cache and .zotero-ft-info are not created in this new folder so that the pdf cannot be open in Firefox by double-clicking on the Zotero open

Those files don't have anything to do with opening the file in Zotero. They're full-text cache files, and they won't be created if the PDF tools can't read from the file (because it's protected or is image-only).

fpantin

OK, thanks. The problem can be solved by changing the pdf file name in the Explorer and then the file path in Zotero.

For example, here was the former name automatically given by Zotero:
"Barkan et Luz - 2007 - Diffusivity fractionations of H 216OH 217O and H .pdf"

and the new name I have given:
"Barkan et Luz - 2007.pdf"

There was a special character after the "H"s (an exponent). Is there any mean to manage that automatically?

Rintze

Paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rcm.3180/abstract

dstillman

What exactly happens when you try?

In Zotero 3.0b3 on Windows XP, with the Foxit Reader PDF plugin in Firefox, I get an empty Firefox window with a zotero://attachment URL. I'm get the same behavior on Windows 7 with the Adobe Acrobat plugin.

A similar problem has been reported before.

dstillman

I also get a blank window by dragging the PDF from the file system directly into Firefox, so this does appear to be a bug in the plugins, Firefox, or Windows itself. The file does open in Acrobat Reader directly, but another program I tested wasn't able to access it.

We can try to figure out what characters cause this and strip them. For what it's worth, the same file works fine in a PDF plugin on OS X.

dstillman

OK, the characters in question are Unicode "thin space" characters. This isn't really our bug, since these are valid characters, but I've updated Zotero to replace various space characters in filenames with regular spaces. The fix will be included in 3.0RC1.

fpantin

I have installed Zotero 3.0b3 on Vista and I get the same behavior as previously (empty Firefox window with a zotero://attachment URL, as you described).

Thanks Dan for having included the fix in the next version.